Stay on Top With .NET Training

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Stay on Top With .NET Training

The .NET development world is moving fast - make sureyou don't get left behind.

By Mike Young

.NET is an extremely powerful development platform thatcan bring you huge gains in productivity, performance, scalability, security,and many other aspects of developing Web and Windows applications. But toachieve these gains, you must conquer a nontrivial learning curve. With powercomes complexity, and .NET features new languages, design patterns, andthousands of classes in the Framework Class Library you must master to get thejob done.

The only way to conquer this mountain of knowledgeeffectively and in a timely manner is through training. Training can take manyforms, and it means different things to different people. Training can involveself-study, attending courses or conferences at a provider's location, orhaving an instructor come to you. You'll determine the form that works best foryou based on a combination of factors, including the advantages and disadvantagesof the different forms, personal preferences and capabilities, availablefunding, location, and the number of people you want to train at one time.

Most people agree that training is a key element tosuccess in software development and you can't afford not to train continuously.But training always is the thing that gets cut from company budgets because "wedon't have money for that." In fact, if you care about maintaining yourdeveloper skills and staying competitive in a warp-speed industry where manytechnologies become obsolete when they reach their first birthday, you can'tafford not to train.

Max Your Results With PersonalTraining

The most effective form of training, in terms of packingthe most training into the shortest period of time, is concentrated,instructor-led training that includes some portion as hands-on programming. Youcan obtain this kind of training either from individual consultants who usuallyprovide the training on site or locally, or from training-focused companies thatrange in size from small to very large. I highly recommend off-site instructionbecause it lets you focus, leaving behind the distractions and interruptions ofongoing projects at your workplace.

Unfortunately, the most accessible, easy-to-schedule, andinexpensive training options usually are the least effective. These optionsinclude the large training companies, which offer courses for every technicaltopic under the sun taught by a cast of minions that may or may not have anyreal expertise in the courses they teach. Although I have never attended acourse from one of these organizations personally, I have spoken to many peoplewho have, and the reviews usually are lukewarm at best. The common impressionleft by these companies is they calibrate their training based on the lowestcommon denominator, so the amount of real training received by each individualis somewhat low unless they happen to be thatlowest common denominator. From my experience and observations, bigger rarelyis better when it comes to training providers.

The best .NET training available comes from a handful ofcompanies that focus primarily on providing .NET-specific training and whoserosters of trainers include names you probably recognize (see the sidebar, "ASelect Few"). Most of these companies also provide consulting services, whichis a key element in ensuring that the instructors base their training andexamples on real-world experience, not simply academic theory and basic how-toknowledge.

Most companies conduct their courses on site if you haveenough students, and they offer public courses on a periodic basis. One thingto be aware of is that the bigger the training company is, the higher theprobability that the instructor you receive your training from may not be oneof the big-name instructors you think you are getting. Make sure to clarifywith the provider who the instructor will be and what its policy is forchanging the instructor to ensure that your expectations are met and you arenot the victim of a bait-and-switch tactic. The costs for each are all prettycompetitive, so you probably should worry more about getting the rightinstructor and location than shaving a few bucks off the price.

Putting it to the Test

To research this article, I attended a .NET class taughtby Juval L wy of IDesign, Inc. (http://www.idesign.net).Juval is a well-known trainer, speaker, writer, and consultant, and Microsofthas recognized him as a "Software Legend" (http://www.softwarelegends.com) asone of the world's top .NET experts. I attended a "Master Class," which is afive-day, densely packed, deeply technical training syllabus that coveredeverything from the basics of C# and the .NET Framework to much morecomplicated topics, including multithreading, security, remoting, andenterprise services. The quality of instruction was very high, and it includeda well-balanced mix of instruction, demos, and hands-on labs. IDesign and othercompanies offer similar courses that range from half-day seminars on specifictopics to one-week "Master Class," "Boot Camp," or "Guerilla" approaches. Thesecourses offer the most in-depth training in a short period of time. The depthof instruction for some of these courses might be a little challenging forgreen developers, but even seasoned experts can learn good information and newtechniques in these courses.

But there are other options for getting the training youneed, such as .NET developer conferences. Unfortunately, these often areoverlooked or viewed simply as a good deal. But in fact, most developerconferences are jam-packed with training sessions that directly model thematerials presented in other advanced courses, with a little less interaction.Often this is because the speakers at the conferences are the exact same peoplewho provide training as their primary profession. Conferences have theadditional benefit that the attendees often can pick from one of severalconcurrent training tracks, letting you choose the sessions that will providethe most reinforcement of the specific job skills you need. Conferences alsooffer a good opportunity to meet and network with developers from othercompanies and industries and to learn how they employ the technologies beingdiscussed.

I recently experienced what I would consider to be apinnacle form of a developer conference and training opportunity - the .NETNirvana II Geek Cruise (http://www.geekcruises.com; see Figure 1). This is a developer conferencehosted by GeekCruises.com and it's held on a cruise ship. I attended an eventco-hosted by Wintellect aboard a Holland America Caribbean cruise with animpressive crew of speakers, including Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter, BrentRector, Jason Clark, Francesco Balena, and Brian Noyes. The company offersother conferences with a wide variety of technical topics, and .NET Nirvana IIIhits the seas this winter.

Figure 1. Geek Cruises' home pagecertainly paints an enticing picture, and the training, professional, andpersonal experience exceeded my expectations.

Although your perception of this form of conference mightbe as an excuse to take a vacation and call it business, I found it to be anoutstanding mix of professional training, networking, and personal enjoyment.Training sessions were held all day while at sea, with evening events held onthe short days in port. The conference provided a great balance of high-qualitytechnical training and interaction with the speakers and attendees that simplyis not possible at the bigger conferences. Like other conferences, the cruisehad three concurrent tracks, allowing you to hand-pick your curriculum. Whenyou take all this into account, along with the benefits of combining businesswith pleasure for stress relief and job satisfaction and the fact that thetotal cost of the trip is about the same as (or less than) sending someone to amajor conference out of town, Geek Cruises are definitely worth considering.

If you can't sell the business case for a Geek Cruise orone is not available in your time frame, you have many other large conferencesfrom which to choose. For instance, I have attended several VSLive! conferencesand found them to be filled with high-quality speakers and events well worththe cost of the trip and conference; likewise with Microsoft's Tech-Ed andProfessional Developers Conference (PDC). Regardless of which conference youchoose, take a look at the planned agenda and speaker roster to decide whetherit fits your training needs and to ensure the schedule includes a good ratio ofwell-known speakers and writers. But don't be afraid to attend sessions fromunknown speakers - those well-known speakers were not born that way.

Make the Most of Your Resources

If you can't convince your boss of the cost-effectivenessof quality instructor-led training or conferences (hopefully this article willhelp), or the funds or time simply are not available, you'll be left to yourown devices. All is not lost, however, as long as you have some self-disciplineand a little free time to pursue self-study. Again, you have many options inthis arena, including magazines (such as asp.netPRO),books, and multimedia training. (You also should be learning continuously usingthe resources I've mentioned here, even if you do get to attend instructor-ledtraining or a conference.)

Magazines and books obviously are an invaluable source forself-paced learning. Publications such as asp.netPROhelp keep you up to speed on the latest emerging technologies and techniques,and they do so in small digestible chunks. If you are not a subscriber at leastto one magazine in your development arena and reading it regularly, you aredoing yourself a disservice. You also have a slew of great Web sites forlearning about .NET. Read the CodeWise Community special in the March 2003issue of asp.netPRO for some pointersto good sites. For general .NET knowledge and discussion, Carl Franklinproduces a unique and entertaining Internet radio talk show named ".NET Rocks!"(http://www.franklins.net) that Ipersonally enjoy downloading and listening to while commuting to customersites.

There also are a ton of books out there on .NET, butbeware as the quality of these books varies widely. The best approach forselecting a title is to go with the recommendation of someone whose knowledgeyou respect. Another approach is to choose a writer you have read before andenjoyed. Finally, there is nothing as good as going down to your localbookstore, cuddling up with a stack of prospective selections and a triplegrande frappe mocha-coffelato, and investing an hour or two making sure youdon't waste your time on a book that turns out to be a dud. Good books have theadditional benefit of still being there to answer your questions when you tryto employ what you learned potentially months after you first learned it.

If reading computer books is a sure-fire path to findingyourself waking up in a puddle of drool, other more interactive and visuallyengaging forms of self-paced training are available. When I went searching forWeb-based and CD-ROM-based training related to ASP.NET, I was surprised at thefew options out there. The best I could find was a set of CD-ROM-based coursesoffered by AppDev (http://www.appdev.com),which has a comprehensive ASP.NET curriculum that is quite good. The setincludes printed materials as well as the CD-ROMs for video-based training thatresembles the kind of content you would get at a software conference. The factthat you can rewind and replay is definitely a plus, and they come with sourcecode you can review and try out on your own. You can control not only theplayback of the lectures, but you also can take quizzes to test yourcomprehension and retention, look things up in a glossary, and use additionalexercises and materials located on the CD-ROM. AppDev also offers a similarcourse on ADO.NET.

Finally, after you have acquired your knowledge and put itto use for a while, why not get a merit badge for your work? Microsoftcertifications often can make the difference between getting and not getting ajob or contract, which I can say from first-hand experience. Microsoft alreadyhas released an entire curriculum of Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)exams for .NET that can lead either to a Microsoft Certified ApplicationDeveloper (MCAD) or Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) credentialin .NET (see http://www.microsoft.com/mcp).These tests are conducted either by VUE (http://www.vue.com)or Prometric (http://www.prometric.com),and you can take them in an hour or so. Preparing for these exams takes quite abit longer, but all the training resources I've mentioned so far will help youalong the way. One final resource I would highly recommend is to practice withsome exam preparation software such as Self Test Software (http://www.selftestsoftware.com) orTranscender (http://www.transcender.com).These companies offer MCP exam simulations that test you with questions thatare extremely close to the questions you will see on the exam, and they willhelp you identify the areas where you need additional study time and provideyou training material and references to beef up your knowledge in those areas.

Keeping up with the pace of change is the key to survivalin any industry. Armed with the training tools I've mentioned in this article,you can withstand the frequent technology shifts that pervade thisever-changing work environment.

Mike Young is a .NET consultant workingin the greater Minneapolis area. Contact him at [email protected].

A Select Few

There are a lot of training companies out there, rangingfrom small to large. Some good examples of companies in the .NET arena worthlooking into include IDesign (http://www.idesign.net),Wintellect (http://www.wintellect.com),DevelopMentor (http://www.develop.com),and the Richard Hale Shaw Group (http://www.richardhaleshawgroup.com).

Wintellect has gathered some of the biggest names in the.NET world into its company, and it certainly has some of the most professionalspeakers and consultants in the industry. Anyone who has picked up a .NETprogramming magazine has heard such names as Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter,John Robbins, and Dino Esposito, all of whom are part of Wintellect.

DevelopMentor got a lot of its visibility and fame fromsome of its early founders and members, including Don Box, Chris Sells, andothers. Some of those original founders have moved on to become Microsoftemployees, but DevelopMentor still has a bunch of top speakers and writers,including Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, and Fritz Onion, to name a few. As faras I can tell, DevelopMentor is the largest of the companies listed here.

is a consortium of top names in the .NET development worldwho focus on .NET architecture and design, both for consulting and training.IDesign's members have broad experience covering all aspects of .NET, and eachmember focuses on particular areas for deep coverage of complex topics. IDesignwas founded and is still led by "Software Legend" Juval L wy.

The Richard Hale Shaw Group was founded by its namesakewho has been a popular speaker and trainer at conferences and his "Boot Camp"classes for years. This company is smaller, similar to IDesign, and has aselect group of trainers teaching courses who are well-known trainers andwriters themselves.

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